Rock Your PPC World with Google AdWords Campaign Drafts & Experiments

Did you know AdWords has a feature that lets you create a variation of an existing campaign and then
plit test it against your original campaign? It’s an incredible way to try improving your PPC campaigns, without actually changing a campaign (unless you decide to later, anyway). This little gem is known as Google AdWords Campaign Drafts and Experiments, and it’s going to make your advertising experience more efficient, valuable and, perhaps, enlightening.

What Is Google AdWords Campaign Drafts and Experiments?

Campaign Drafts and Experiments is a feature available in Google AdWords. The campaign drafts tool essentially allows you to copy an existing campaign, make adjustments (to bidding strategies, target CPA, etc.), and then either apply it to the existing campaign or test it alongside the existing campaign.

When you test the draft next to an existing campaign, it’s called an experiment. Google Campaign Experiments let you allocate a portion of your original campaign budget to test the draft campaign and see which campaign (draft or original) performs better.

Why would you want to use these features?

You might use Google AdWords Campaign Drafts and Experiments for a few different reasons:

Test variations of Target CPAs, device settings, location adjustments, ad extensions, etc. to see what works best

Improve performance for a not-so-great campaign

Experiment with variations without the risk of losing a good-performing campaign

Experiment without the risk of normal campaign spending (you’re only dedicating a portion of the original campaign’s budget for testing)

Just So You Know

It’s important to note that Drafts and Campaigns are only available on the Search and Display networks. While you can create several drafts, you can only test one draft at a time. You can also set an experiment to run for any duration, and you can end it early but you cannot resume once it’s completed. Once you run the test, AdWords lets you compare the performance of the draft and original campaigns side-by-side.

If you’re currently using AdWords for PPC advertising, give the Drafts and Experiments feature a try. What do you have to lose?